UK Takes One More Step Towards Software Patents

from the can-bilski-cross-the-pond? dept

As we eagerly await the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) ruling in the
Bilski case -- which could greatly cut back on the ability of the US Patent Office to
grant software and business model patents, it looks Europe may be moving in the opposite
direction. We had earlier reported on a ruling in the UK which said that the UK Patent
Office had gone too far in tossing out a Symbian patent application because it was
software. Now, a UK appeals court has agreed with the earlier ruling, effectively
saying that Symbian can, in fact, patent software in the UK, despite earlier policies that
did not allow software patents.

The reasoning behind the ruling is a little odd, as it seems mostly based on aligning UK
patent rules with the rest of Europe's. However, that doesn't mean that the ruling
actually makes sense or does anything towards promoting innovation (and, plenty of recent
studies show quite clearly that software patents appear to do exactly the opposite). This
is definitely bad news for the software industry in the UK, which will now find more
tollbooths to deal with, and more patent thickets to pick through. Money is going to be
wasted going after legal fights, rather than on research, development and actually serving
customers.

Offtopic Rant about GMail

I love you GMail. Sometimes, I get about 50 emails that are all sent to my GMail account within 3 minutes.

"WOW" I think. Absolutely awesome!

Let me just say it's amazing and quite thrilling that 50-some odd emails would all come to me (or be approved for delivery) within a 3 minute period. It's quite amazing that 50 people would want to reach me at a specific time.

Could it be because they were, shall we say "in transit" or at that point in time called herm, gee "information" (and legally don't enjoy the same rights as "data" (which by some crazy translation of the Constitution is somehow "information at rest") so we make a fancy footwork around the Constitutional Rights for this fancy thing we call "Terrorism"?

Quite frankly, I don't believe this exists because the only terrorism that exists is that which is of a financial nature.